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Zergling
The Zergling is a zerg baser, and is known for having the fastest base movement speed of the builders. It, like other basers, focuses on creating a powerful base as its modus operandi. The zergling is unique in that it is the single most overpowered baser in the game, capable of not only setting up a base in record time due to the fact that its towers are upgraded globally and not singly, and for having the single highest damage per second of all the baser's towering. Also of note is that the zergling is capable of basing the earliest out of all the builders due to its cheap towers and quick lumber collection. '=Buildings' The zergling has the standard buildings neccesary to builders, but lacks extra buildings such as the marine's bunkers. Instead it makes up for this by turning some facilities into mobile units, and adding features to units such as the overlord so they can fill multiple roles. 'Spine Crawler' Hotkey: W This is the Zergling's blocking building. Not only is zergling known for its utterly overpowered towering, but its walls can also reach ludicrous levels of power due to the fact that it is the only wall in the game other than obelisks that have three levels of upgrades. Also notable is that the spine crawler can attack while rooted in place, adding even more DPS to an already powerful arrangement. Note: Uprooted spine crawlers can be used to block off 1x1 air bubbles within a towering arrangement, due to its immunity to all nukes because of its classification as a building. Note: Overseer's creep increases the attack speed of spine crawlers, making them the most powerful walls in the game. 'Hatchery' Hotkey: Q Wood: 10 Gold: 0 Seconds: 3 HP: 200 Armor: 5 Units Trained: Drone Overlord Size: 2x2 This is the resource drop-off point and worker creation building for the Zergling. It feeds the same as a wall, so hatcheries may be used as preliminary walls for juke points. Note that Hatcheries have injection used on them, increasing the amount of lumber capable of being collected by any drone that drops wood off to it. This allows the zergling to procure absolutely ludicrous amounts of wood within short time spans in comparison to other builders. The Hatchery also produces overlords, the flying mobile supply of the zergling. Spawning Pool Hotkey: P Wood: 150 Gold: 0 Seconds: 10 HP: 300 Armor: 5 Researches Available: Evolved Spore Crawlers Harvester Survival Training Units Trained: Lurker, Queen Size: 3x3 The First research building that the zergling has available, the Spawning Pool allows the production of the lurker titan hunter and queens. Queens are a neccesity of the zergling due to its ability to literally double the rate at which lumber is collected. Also available at the spawning pool is research options such as the tower upgrade and the harvester survival training upgrade. The tower upgrade is a must-have for any zergling, as it is a global upgrade for every single zergling tower owned by the zergling instead of an upgrade for a single tower. Note that the tower upgrades often cost large amounts of lumber to purchase. Spore Crawler Hotkey: S Wood: 100 (Upgrade 5000) (Upgrade 8500) Gold: 0 (Upgrade 0) (Upgrade 0) Seconds: 3 (Upgrade 0) (Upgrade 0) HP: 125 (Upgrade 150) (Upgrade 175) Armor: 5 (Upgrade 5) (Upgrade 5) Damage: 35 (Upgrade 40) (Upgrade 45) AS: 1.85 (Upgrade 2) (Upgrade 2) Range: 7 (Upgrade 8) (Upgrade 9) Supply: 1 (Upgrade 1) (Upgrade 1) SPECIAL ABILITY: Uproot Size: 2x2 The zergling's main defensive tower, the spore crawler is notable for not being upgraded individually. Instead, they are treated to global upgrades to their statistics making the spore crawlers the most versatile, easily built towers in the game. Note that spore crawlers can be uprooted, allowing units and titan hunters to move through towering, and damage control to be done in the case of a succesful infested terran rush. As a trade-off, the spore crawler has a relatively low amount of hit points compared to the towers of other basers. However, the zergling's ability to prevent infested terran masses by utilizing uprooted spine crawlers equals this single weakness out. Note that creep made from overseers increases the tower's attack speed, making the spore crawler the single fastest shooting tower available to basers other than gold towers. Evolution Chamber Hotkey: V Wood: 500 Gold: 45 Seconds: 10 HP: 300 Armor: 5 Size: 3x3 The first gold tech building available to the zergling, the evolution chamber unlocks the second tower upgrade for the zergling and unlocks the regeneration tower and harvester survival training. Advanced Research Chamber Hotkey: R Wood: 1250 Gold: 45 Seconds: - HP: 300 Armor: 5 Researches Available: Enchanced Spore Crawler Damage Enchanced Spore Crawler Range Size: 3x3 This is the last tech building of the zergling. It has two 2000 wood upgrades that increase spore crawler damage (by 10) and range (by 1). Regeneration Tower Hotkey: P Wood: 2000 Gold: 45 Seconds: 45 HP: 400 Armor: 1 Energy: 400 SPECIAL ABILITY: Regenerative Saliva Rapidly regenerates the health of an allied structure. Size: 3x3 The Regeneration Tower is structure that automatically heals allied structures within a range of approximately 6. This ability is particularly useful in the odd case where the titan has a remarkably low damage, or that there are changeling corruptors there to lower the titan's damage by force. Note that this is NOT a priority tower, and is not important to the general structure of a zergling base. *Note: When itemized, the Regeneration tower can be picked up by a lurker, granting it an additional 50% energy and enabling the mass regeneration ability. However, due to a bug energy is not increased by the item form. '=Units=' The zergling, as opposed to many other basers in the game, has a plethora of available mobile units at its command, many of them proving absolutely critical to the general functioning of a base. 'Drone' The drone is the resource collection unit of the zergling. Of all the workers in the game, it is unique in that its resource collection rate can be increased by the ability of a other unit specifically designed for that purpose. By using a queen's inject hatchery skill, all of the wood collected by a drone will be increased by 50%. This allows the drone to collect large amounts of lumber, even without the worker upgrades that they typically hold. Cost: 6 supply. Producing Building: Hatchery 'Queen' The queen is the showpiece of zergling flexibility. The queen is a multifunctional swiss army knife of a unit, capable of boosing not only lumber collection to a collection building, but also healing damaged structures from a range and lowering a titan's resistance to damage. The queen proves to be an all-around asset to any base, due to its support abilities. Queens also serve as the fail-safe that supply buildings tend to be for other basers, and acts as a supply would in case of a teammate attempting to grief your base. An important thing to note is that the queen appears to be the only unit of the zergling's that has its movement speed increased on creep. This means that when creep has been set up, queens instantly become one of the more valuable units at the zergling's disposal, contrary to when they used to only operate resource collection purposes. It should be taken note that transfusion does not, in fact, heal anything other than buildings. The queen is unable to heal the player's titan hunter because it is not classified as a building. The queen also has a burrow ability enabled at the start, making the queen easy to save in the first few minutes of gameplay. Cost: 500 wood, 6 supply. Hotkey: Q Producing Building: Spawning Pool 'Overlord/Cargolord' The overlord is the typical supply unit of the zergling, and is unique among supplies that it is airborne and mobile, making it very useful in providing vision around the map where it is otherwise unsafe to check by other sources. The overlord's evolution oargolord looks exactly the same as the overlord, and costs 1000 lumber to evolve into. The cargolord is capable of loading and unloading units other than the zergling, making it a valuable escape mechanism for a lurker or queen who may have been outside the base. Note that the overlord/cargolord is vulnerable to spells, and can easily be blasted out of the sky by a nuke that causes 200 damage. Therefore, it is ill advised to keep all your overlords squeezed into one space, as they end up feeding a large amount if killed in bulk amounts. Cost: 20 wood for overlord, 1000 for cargolord. Hotkey: V Producing Building: Hatchery 'Overseer' The overseer, made available by an evolution chamber, is an absolute neccesity to any zergling base as soon as it is finished. This is because its generate creep ability increases the attack speed of towers in the creep by 20%. This can increase the damage done by spore crawlers exponentially, as well as pushing the zergling towers into the position as "strongest tower" by making it the fastest firing tower in the game. The overseer also acts as a detector, making it invaluable against any burrowing or cloaking enemy. Note, however, that overseers do not increase movement speed of anything other than queens, and even though it does decrease titan movement speed, it should not be relied on as an escape mechanism. Cost: 500 wood. Hotkey: V Producing building: Morphed from overlord '=Upgrades=' 'Harvester Burrow' Hotkey: B Wood: 250 Gold: 0 Seconds: 30 Effect: Unlocks the "Burrow" ability for drones. Researching Structure: Spawning Pool Harvester burrow is a questionable upgrade in that its usefulness is ambiguous. While it may be useful against a titan that has no scan and no at-point nuke, against anything that is capable of at-point nuke or scan (All of them except Demonicus and Immortal), the burrow is utterly useless as an ability and only allows the titan to wipe out an entire wood line with barely an extra effort involved. 'Harvester Survival Training' Hotkey: U Wood: 1500 (Upgrade: 1500) (Upgrade: 1500) Gold: 0 (Upgrade: 0) (Upgrade: 0) Seconds: 120 (Upgrade: 120) (Upgrade: 120) Requirements: Nothing (Upgrade: Terran Academy) (Upgrade: Adv Research) Effect: Increases the life of all drones by 50/100/150. Researching Structure: Spawning Pool This upgrade permanently increases the life of all scv workers by an increment of 50 per rank. While not the first priority in terms of research, this upgrade is useful in the case of a war of attrition against the titan due to its effect of allowing drones to survive nuking abilities. 'Enchanced Spore Crawler Damage' Hotkey: D Wood: 2000 Gold: 0 Seconds: 30 Requirements: Nothing Effect: All spore crawlers gain an extra 10 damage. Researching Structure: Advanced Research Chamber This upgrade, researched at the advanced research chamber, increases spore crawler damage by 10. All upgrades included, this pushes spore crawler damage up to a maximum of 55, almost to the degree of a transcendental tower by a zealot. 'Enchanced Spore Crawler Range' Hotkey: R Wood: 2000 Gold: 0 Seconds: 30 Requirements: Nothing Effect: All spore crawlers gain an extra 1 range. Researching Structure: Advanced Research Chamber The enchanced range that this upgrade allows can push a zergling above and beyond typical basing. Even though the maximum range is still 10, this upgrade is nonetheless critical to the proper functioning to a zergling base. '=Strategies=' 'Having a Game Plan' There are several important considerations to make immediately after spawning. its good to have a plan ahead of time so that you know what to do and you can act quickly. You should almost always place one hatchery around the gold so that you can spread overlords to the pillars that surround it. This will give you and your teammates good vision of the gold, and should help warn you when the titan is returning. There's an artform to good overlord setup, so I'll cover this in more detail shortly. You have a few options: *Gold almost exclusively with only a few drones mining so you can buy overlords. Set up a wood base once you have 45 gold. *Set up a complete wood base and then go gold. *Set up a "feed" wood base very quickly, then immediately go gold. Of these, I choose the third option. I will cover all of these strategies shortly. 'Random vs. Selected' There's also a pretty important distinction between randoming zergling and choosing it manually. Normal zerglings get 50 wood, while random zerglings get 100. 50 wood is enough for 3 hatcheries and a single overlord, or 1 hatchery and two overlords. 100 wood is enough for 4 hatcheries and 3 overlords. If you selected zergling manually, generally you'll want to go with 3 hatches and a single overlord. You can place one hatch around the gold and two in your wood base. If you're golding immediately, however, build just one hatch and two overlords. If you randomed, you can place 2 hatches around the gold and two in your wood base. If you randomed and are golding immediately, you can place 2 hatches around the gold and build 4 overlords. 'Overlord Setup' its important to know that overlords do not give gold when killed, and give only a small amount of experience. Feeding one or two overlords to the titan is almost inevitable, but you want to try and avoid giving them away for free. Overlords in the open are free kills. Overlords over pillars on hold position are not free. They require nukes to kill, and for every titan but the firebat it takes at least two nukes. its very important to put them on hold position, otherwise they will run from the nuke, putting them out in the open for a free follow up kill. If the titan does decide to use two nukes to kill your overlords, just smile. He is wasting a ton of time for very little benefit. Also, dts may be able to poke the gold without worrying about being nuked for a few seconds. If the titan appears dead-set on destroying all your overlords, stop making them around the gold. Allow him to waste his time destroying them, don't try to move them out of the way (which may potentially expose them). Just replace them somewhere else. This is especially true against a firebat. There's no sense in constantly feeding him overlords he can kill in a single hit. As far as setting up overlords goes, I like to rally each hatchery to a single pillar. As I train one overlord, I start a "train" of overlords moving from one pillar to the next. This way, multiple overlords are moving at once, and there's a low chance that he'll be able to catch more than one in the open. Hit Shift+H to queue hold position once the overlord has reached its destination. Don't run overlords directly across gaps if the titan is near the gold. Instead, queue a two-point path that moves away from the gold diagonally, then moves on to the next pillar. By late game, expect all of your overlords around the gold to be destroyed. You will most likely need to replace them in your base. You can use them to increase your vision of the area surrounding your base. 'Golding with your Zergling' Don't bother using burrow to escape the titan unless you're really desperate. its just too vulnerable to scan or nuke, and you move so slow. Burrow is good for hiding, its less good when the titan knows exactly where you are. Your passive speed is your best escape ability, but it has limitations you need to be aware of: If the titan is an archon, he may have rage. its a good idea to wall one side of the gold to give you an escape route. Otherwise, he will be able to catch up with you quite easily. Also, archons can have cloak and infestors can have burrow. its generally best to know where the titan is before golding. Failing that, at least be ready to run sideways instead of backwards. A cloaked/burrowed titan will almost always appear behind you, and if you run that way he'll get several free hits on you as you run around him. If you run sideways into a juke point, you should be ok. Still, you need to be very alert so that your reaction time is immediate. If for some reason he appears besides you, you need to be able to quickly adjust your path in another direction. I repeat, however, that's its just plain better to know where the titan is. Cloak has a limited duration (15-45 seconds) and a long cooldown (2 minutes). Burrow has a very short cooldown (5 seconds?) and an infinite duration. Plan accordingly. Demonicus can also cloak, but he can not move while cloaked. Far too few people realize this. In all other situations, its pretty safe to gold without any walls. Overlords should give you good vision to give you time to leave the gold far before the titan reaches it. If the titan is an immortal, make sure you're leaving early to avoid graviton beam. Likewise, the ultralisk can fungal growth, slowing you down and allowing him to get in some hits. Avoid this as well. Finally, avoid an immortal with any other mini like the plague. This is true for any builder. Graviton will give the other mini plenty of time to kill you. 45 gold is the baseline. Your base will ultimately be much better if you have 45 gold. 90 gold is even better, and not unreasonable to get in a number of circumstances. If you manage to get 140 gold, the game is probably a fail. Still, 140 gold gets you a regeneration tower as well. In a normal game, you'd probably have to wait for bonus gold for this. 'Golding Immediately' NEVER GOLD IMMEDIATELY!!! IT WILL RESULT IN INSTANT DEATH!! 'Setting up a Full Wood Base' If you choose to set up a wood base first, you'll use a strategy much like any other baser. I don't personally like doing this because it really limits your gold-gathering time. The zergling has some really good escape abilities, but it gets a lot harder to survive at the gold once minis pop. Regardless, whether setting up a wood base early or late, its generally best to set them up far from the gold. Unlike the other basers, the zergling benefits from having as few hatcheries as possible. This is because of queen injection. That said, the base in the bottom right is probably one of the best. Two hatcheries is plenty for this base. This base also makes a pretty decent zergling base overall, although its a little low on space for supporters. Set up your hatcheries and start building drones. When you get enough wood, build some walls (spine crawlers) at the entrance. Don't go nuts here, you're not trying to make a spine crawler base. Just make the minimum required to block the choke. Finally, build a spawning pool. You can leave your base once the spawning pool is built. Do not stick around your wood base, burrowed or not. That's about the least safe place you could be. If you need to build overlords in your wood base, do not leave them there! Don't leave them grouped together, either. A nuke should only be able to hit one overlord at a time. Spread them around on cliff tops for some extra vision. Once you've finished building drones, make sure to hotkey them for quick detonation. When you've got enough gold, build some queens. Queens will really boost your wood production, and are well worth the extra food. I build 2, even if I have 3 or 4 hatcheries, generally because I forget to inject sometimes and their energy builds up. its usually better to worry more about microing your builder than injecting your hatcheries. Finally, build a lurker. When it finishes, uproot a wall and get him out of your base. You don't want to leave him there as feed. You'll want him to be able to run away if needed. Lurker micro will be covered in another section. 'The "Feed" Base' Half-way between golding immediately and wooding immediately is the "feed" base. I call it this because you can't afford to wall off right away. Instead, you just build two hatcheries and leave, building drones slowly as you can. If the titan finds it, he'll probably get a few drone kills before you have time to detonate. Generally, this is OK. If you're getting gold, its worth the feed. Chances are, other players are getting gold too. Early on, you won't have a lot of drones anyways, as building overlords around the gold tends to go quite slowly. Don't forget to detonate though. You probably won't have them all hotkeyed yet, so you'll probably have to box and det. When you reach 45 gold, or when the titan returns or if he's just camping, go back and complete the base setup. If there's been a kill, you might want to just relocate your wood base altogether. its also worth noting the crawlers, but you should definitely be aware of this. I've killed my own lurker more than once in order to get him on the other side of my wall. It takes 2 minutes to retrain a lurker. Killing him yourself is better than feeding him to the titan, if you really need to do this. 'When to Base' The cost of zergling bases vary wildly. In a typical zergling early base setup, zergling bases are almost as cheap as marine's towers, costing a paltry 100 wood to create unupgraded towers. However, it should be noted that in the long run the zergling has quite possibly the most expensive base possible to any baser in the game. This is due to the fact that tower upgrades are universal instead of directed on one unit, and cost significant amounts of lumber. Therefore proper caution should be taken while basing as zergling. Zergling bases typically cost 6000 for early game basing and 12000 for mid game basing. The towers themselves are cheap, but the tower upgrades cost a hefty amount to buy costing 5000 lumber for the first upgrade alone. That being said, a fully upgraded zergling is quite possibly the most powerful baser in the game, capable of attack damage and range equal to a zealot's base's, and possibly more because of its ability to create overseers. Also of note is the fact that the zergling's tower can uproot, blocking off 1x1 "air bubbles" within towering ledges so that no infested terrans can spawn. Zergling bases are all about speed and precision. Zerglings can set up fully upgraded bases faster than any other builder in the game due to the fact that you cannot upgrade zergling towers individually. It is often a good idea to purchase a zergling tower upgrade a good 40 seconds before setting up base, as a zergling tower upgrade increases the cost of zergling towers by 25 gold each time. =Special Thanks= Whoever made the strategy. Category:Builder